With We Energies executives viewing the flurry of data centers planned for Southeast Wisconsin as a growth opportunity, the company rolled out a plan Monday that would see data center operators footing the bill for building new electric capacity.

We Energies said its new rate proposal for data centers is designed to make sure the costs to serve these new mega-customers will not be subsidized by residential or business customers, said Brendan Conway, the company’s media relations director.

“This is important to us and to the very large customers we have been working with — they are committed to paying their fair share,” Conway said Monday via email.

In return, the plan would provide data centers access to reliable power to meet their needs, Conway said. Those very large customers would directly pay for the power they consume as well as costs of power generation plants and distribution facilities We Energies builds to serve the customers, he said.

Data centers require huge amounts of electricity to power servers, data storage drives and network equipment for IT systems. The facilities’ operators seek sites with access to reliable energy from companies like We Energies, which is a business unit of Milwaukee-based WEC Energy Group Inc. (NYSE: WEC).

The boom in artificial intelligence along with the growing need for cloud services is driving demand for more hyper-scale data centers, Conway said.

Read more at the Milwaukee Business Journal.